January 2016

Cloud computing was a hit last year, but 2016 is the year investors start asking more questions about a market very much filled with hyperbole. The stocks of the two top cloud providers by revenue, Amazon.com (ticker: AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT), rose by 118% and 19%, respectively, this year. Another cloud vendor, Salesforce.com (CRM), rose 32%. All three vastly outperformed the stocks of the Old Guard in tech, the non-cloud companies such as Oracle (ORCL) and Cisco Systems (CSCO). They fell 19% and 2% this year, respectively.

There are multiple reasons why Amazon and Microsoft enjoyed investor favor, but a lot of it has to do with the simple fact that they started revealing more about their cloud computing results. Amazon first broke out financial reporting for its cloud business in the spring, and Microsoft followed with its own reclassification of revenue in September...

Cloud computing has totally transformed the way organizations operate and professionals access technology resources. In less than a decade, the move to the cloud has revolutionized the entire IT sector. Companies are now moving away from hardware and licensed software purchases towards software-, platform- and infrastructure-as-a-service (SaaS, PaaS and IaaS).

Before getting into the growth prospects, it might be helpful to understand what exactly cloud computing represents...

Science Magazine’s first issue of 2016 includes a discussion chronicling how the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is re-exploring how it manages funding for the many biomedical database products it supports. In particular, the NIH National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) is expected to close out its funding of the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) database, one of the oldest genomic databases that has run continuously for 50 years. What does this mean for the future of scientific big data hosting?

Today the NIH spends more than $110 million a year on its largest 50 databases, excluding those hosted by the National Library of Medicine (NLM). OMIM, supported by NHGRI, costs $2.1 million a year and draws more than 300,000 unique users a month and 23 million page views a year, while the Gene Ontology Consortium draws 36,000 users a month at a cost of $3.7 million a year...

It has been an exciting year in the world of IT with key technology trends set to impact the public sector from national to local governments, including the UK healthcare industry into 2016. This last year saw the adoption of virtualisation changing perceptions of the cloud and a number of extremely high-profile breaches changed the conversation around how security and IoT are "game changers" across both the public and private sector.

In 2106, we believe IoT will offer cost-savings as well as new solutions in healthcare and also expect the public sector will reap the benefits of cloud computing. As systems become digitised, it's important security remains front-of-mind, and encryption is used for a healthy future...

If Seattle is the next golden era Detroit, then how is cloud computing the next Model T? As an automobile, the Model T didn't cater to the rich. Isochronic maps ignore class. The time to move from one part of the world to another depends on more than technological innovations in modes of travel. Even today, the ease of one's journey to work depends on household wealth. Henry Ford leveled that playing field. How does the cloud level the playing field?

In and of itself, the cloud doesn't level the playing field. In and of itself, the horseless carriage didn't level the playing field. Ford took a rich plaything, a novelty, and made it accessible to anyone. Rich or poor, no one was stuck on a railroad track. Harbors or river towns mattered less. Likewise, the cloud expands the geographic possibilities...

When it comes to a cloud storage comparison, there are so many vendors to choose from that it can be hard to decide which option to choose. For those attempting to do so, here are some tips from experts in this field of cloud evaluation and deployment.

Head to the Cloud

Most analysts agree that a headlong rush to the public cloud is not a good idea for every organization and every workload. But it works well for many storage use cases. So regardless of the various cautions, Andy Walls, IBM Fellow, CTO and Chief Architect at IBM, believes more companies will look to the cloud for their storage needs...

If the analysts at the IEEE Computer Society are correct, the coming year will see significant drops in the cost of cloud services, as well as better, faster performance. Thanks to increasing adoption of container technology, as well as network function virtualization, cloud computing will take some great strides.

Container technology and NFV are among the top nine tech trends identified by IEEE. The container phenomenon is of particular interest for companies moving applications to the cloud, the society's analysts observe. "Containers represent a smarter and more economical way to make this move," they state. "Containers allow companies to develop and deliver applications faster, and more efficiently."...

Fusion, a leading provider of cloud services, announced today that a major East Coast University has signed a three year, $150,000 agreement to replace its costly and inefficient legacy communications infrastructure with Fusion's advanced, secure and reliable network connection to the cloud. The private institution, which is well respected for its outstanding undergraduate liberal arts and active graduate research programs, is housed in over 100 buildings spread across more than 200 acres. Fusion was selected in order to meet the university's need for a truly diverse, high quality communications solution that would allow the learning institution to securely access the many cost, efficiency and productivity benefits of the cloud while ensuring business continuity in the event of natural or other disaster.

ActualTech Media, in partnership with Atlantis Computing, today released its Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCIS) and Software-Defined Storage (SDS) 2016 Survey to provide insight on how IT organizations are building modern data centers in 2016 and beyond. The survey, conducted with more than 1,267 data center leaders from 53 countries, revealed that 71 percent either already use or are considering adoption of HCIS or SDS.

“There is a lot of confusion and hype in the fast changing HCIS and SDS markets and it is critical to gather data about real-world usage,” explained Scott D. Lowe, partner and co-founder of ActualTech Media. “We believe this is the largest and most detailed account of adoption, buying criteria and use cases for HCIS and SDS. The new report provides IT organizations with critical insights on how HCIS and SDS technologies are being used, actual experiences from the field and the future plans of data center leaders from around the world.”

CloudPhysics, provider of data-driven insights for smarter IT, today announced a distribution agreement with Ingram Micro Inc., the world's largest wholesale technology distributor. Under the terms of the relationship, Ingram Micro will market, sell and support CloudPhysics' award-winning SaaS analytics solution, which makes it possible for VMware users to preempt and eliminate operational hazards that threaten to disrupt IT operations and applications.

"In today's world of software-defined data centers, infrastructure is increasingly complex, change is constant and the need for specialized IT services providers is growing daily among businesses of all sizes," said Scott Zahl, Vice President and General Manager, Ingram Micro Advanced Solutions. "With CloudPhysics, our channel partners and their customers gain immediate insight into their infrastructure. This allows them to make more informed decisions about how best to manage and maintain a healthy, hybrid IT ecosystem."

VMware, Inc. today announced an expansion of its collaboration with Intel Security to include joint solutions for customers using the AirWatch by VMware Enterprise Mobility Management platform. The two companies have partnered on two initiatives to enable technology integrations that will help enterprises meet today's complex mobile security challenges more effectively and efficiently.

VMware is now a member of the Intel Security Innovation Alliance, a world-class technology partner program that streamlines integration and accelerates the development of interoperable solutions by Intel Security and its partners. VMware and Intel Security plan to offer joint capabilities to their mutual customers, including sharing advanced mobility data via the McAfee Data Exchange Layer, a key component of Intel Security's open, connected security system. McAfee Data Exchange Layer is a bidirectional communications fabric that distributes global and local security intelligence across Intel Security and third-party security products, including mobile clients and gateways, Intel Security threat intelligence technologies, and the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator management platform. The integration of AirWatch with Intel Security technologies will be designed to help customers maximize the value of their current security investments, resolve mobile threats more quickly and reduce operational costs. This joint initiative augments the current portfolio of VMware and Intel Security solutions, which includes advanced security for the software-defined data center.

SimpliVity, a leader in hyperconverged infrastructure revolutionizing enterprise IT, today announced the company has been accepted into the Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Alliance program, and has opened its new Seattle Development Center to serve as an innovation and R&D hub on the West Coast, accelerating SimpliVity’s relationship with Microsoft Corp. and the engineering and marketing of SimpliVity’s hyperconverged solutions for virtualized Microsoft data centers.

SimpliVity designed its OmniStack 3.0 Data Virtualization Platform to be vendor-agnostic – aimed to support any hypervisor, any x86 server, any management tool, and any cloud provider. By virtualizing all IT infrastructure and services below the hypervisor onto x86 building blocks, SimpliVity is able to provide the best of both worlds: enterprise-grade capabilities with low-cost cloud economics, delivering 3x total cost of ownership savings.

With plans to supply 100 MW of electricity to the building, Infomart Dallas provides Nimbix the capacity it needs to scale both density and footprint, necessary for maintaining the high-speed networking fabric required to deliver its HPC cloud applications. With power density requirements equating to three to four times the industry average for cloud computing, Nimbix also takes advantage of the building's access to low-cost power, which enables it to realize a 50 percent power savings as compared to other Dallas data center providers. Additionally, Nimbix's cloud-based supercomputing solution benefits from Infomart's flexible design options, including the use of containment and Vertical Exhaust Ducts (VEDs) to scale density and enable greater efficiency, and consequently, improve usage cost economics.

Maybe it’s just a media thing, but it sure seems that the price-cutting frenzy that roiled the cloud computing market two and three years ago simmered down over the past year. But the lull may be over. On Tuesday, Amazon AMZN 0.07% Web Services kicked off 2016 with a set of price cuts to three of its bread-and-butter Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) computing services.

The nitty-gritty details are here, but basically the public cloud giant is discounting three of its core Linux computing modules by about 5%. The reductions cover users running Amazon’s own version of the Linux open-source operating system. Customers who run Microsoft MSFT -1.62% Windows, or two other flavors of Linux from SUSE or Red Hat RHT -0.78% , will see smaller discounts...

Security is now a key driving force for cloud adoption according to the latest survey by Rackspace, marking a significant turnaround for the technology. The study, titled “The Anatomy of a Cloud Migration,” polled 500 IT and business decision makers in the UK who have either been through or are planning a cloud migration project and found that security was one of the top three motivations for moving to the cloud.

38 per cent of respondents cited security as a reason for migrating, beaten only by reducing IT costs (61 per cent) and disaster recovery capabilities (50 per cent). 58 per cent of organisations also said that they migrated business-critical data to the cloud first, indicating that cloud security fears are abating...

The Defense Department does not have a consistent definition for cloud computing or a complete list of cloud computing service contracts, according to a report from the DOD’s inspector general. That makes it impossible for the department to assess the effectiveness of its cloud computing contracts, the report says.

The inspector general’s office, which issued the report in late December, had sought to find out whether its armed services branches and departments “performed a cost-benefit analysis before acquiring cloud computing services” and whether they had “achieved actual savings as a result of adopting cloud services.”...

Over the course of 2015, we’ve seen many of the trends we predicted last year come to fruition. As cloud adoption in the UK soared past 84% in May, it was evident that we had been right that the technology would become even more mainstream. With enterprises aiming to become more mobile, 2015 has also seen the normalisation of “anytime, anywhere working” and the increased dependency on IT to help drive business transformation.

With over two-thirds of IT departments set to increase their operational IT budgets in 2016, it does not look like the importance of IT in driving business goals will diminish anytime soon – the question really lies in how. Although we don’t have a crystal ball that we can look into to predict anything with certainty, there are some trends emerging that we see shaping the enterprise IT in the year ahead:...

OnApp has announced that its portal for VMware vCloud Air Network service providers has been recommended by VMware for service providers offering VMware vCloud Director, VMware vCenter and VMware vCloud Air MSP cloud services.

Proven in thousands of production cloud deployments globally, the OnApp portal cuts cost through automation, improves customer experience through streamlined provisioning and management, and introduces new ways for vCloud Air Network partners to add value to their customers through new features and services.

Before I look into the proverbial crystal ball again, let's see how I did on my 2015 prediction, which was: 2015 will be the year that enterprise software ISVs embrace cloud licensing. Well, while not universally true, we've seen good progress there. It's hard to argue with the success of cloud licensing for major ISVs like Microsoft and Adobe, but technical computing, as usual, is lagging a bit. However, while not exactly 2015, I happen to know (confidentially) that we will see some